Kelly made an “extremely powerful” speech to a roomful of 150 prominent business leaders about how disruptive and costly the trial would be for lower Manhattan at an annual police charity event on Jan. 13, the source said.

What followed was a barrage of complaints to the mayor from some of New York‘s most powerful tycoons – part of a tide of pressure that led Bloomberg to turn against hosting the trial.

It is very troubling to see such decisions being made by the White House under political pressure. The choice of venue is supposed to be made by prosecutors on the basis of the most logical venue after considering the location of the crime and other factors. We just ended a period in which the Justice Department was politicized by the Bush Administration to an unprecedented degree.

This story follows Obama’s statements that virtually assured the public of convictions, here. It also followed a very political press conference by Holder where he seemed to go out of his way to describe why a Manhattan venue would maximize the bias of a jury at the trial.

I heard Anthony Weiner on Morning Joe explaining that military tribunals can’t used because that format simply hasn’t been set up. Since Bush’s attempts were thrown out of court, no one’s found a lawful way to do it yet.

So why hasn’t the long-winded boob taken a minute away from his perpetual campaign to explain it to the public?